. The next moments stabbed the silence, dragging on leaden feet.
I went to the window. On turning back into the room, I was delighted to
discover a few things to do. The little round corner table was standing
tipped, there were too many leaves in the bouquet ... and this wisp of
hair straggling down my cheek. No, he was not coming. Waiting is a death
died over and over again.

At last....

To think I could have breathed till now! You! He moved toward me rather
timidly, almost as if he were a stranger. It occurred to me that he was
not familiar with my home. A panic seized me: he might not like it.

But in one bound I was close to him, my head on his shoulder and his
arms around me. I forgot everything. "I am so happy, so happy." We found
ourselves in my little room, where the flowers piercing the twilight
opened wide their mock hearts....

But how he had changed; his face had grown thinner.... Why that overcast
brow, that look of depression, that manner of not being at home?... What
was the matter with him?... What was the matter with him?

Though there had been no time for conversation, and we had merely
exchanged awkward, random questions, I felt suddenly that our hearts had
ceased to beat in unison.

He should speak. I must know! Nothing is worse than not knowing....

"I'll tell you," he began, resting his head on his hands. He had
suffered too much by our separation; he had realized this forcibly again
just now when he entered my home where everything dispossessed him; he
could no longer live without me, so far away; he needed me all the time,
every minute. Oh, he knew there was something irrational in his
entreaty, but all he had was plain common sense. "Listen to me," he
said, "there's an instinct, an instinct stronger ... but you don't
understand ... there ... I've told you everything ... that's all."

He began again. His expostulations breathed an awful storm; while an icy
clearness and a terrible calm rose in me. Fear crept into me down to the
very marrow of my bones. What could I say to a man who suddenly talked
another language? All I had was the words we used to....

"Answer me, I beg of you, answer me, even if it is no, but answer
me...."

Did I have to begin all over again--give everything and explain
everything all over again? Until then I had been carried along on the
sustaining bosom of a powerful stream. Now a torrent furiously
discharged its troubled waters and infernal foam into the even f